Guild Wars 2 is going Free-To-Play

I'd like to play this. How often do they do "free weekends"? Is this the only way to try it out?

The first was mid-November and the second was the end of April so assuming the stick to the same time between free weekends that would put the next one around mid-October although I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't closer to end of August for their one year anniversary. That said, while it is against the ToS/ToU/ToE*, if you have a friend or someone else that trusts you who plays Guild Wars 2 you could always just log in as them and try it out on their account.

*I like things to come in 3s when possibly and I couldn't think of another "Terms of" thing to use in there so I went with Terms of Endearment.

I'd like to play this. How often do they do "free weekends"? Is this the only way to try it out?

The first was mid-November and the second was the end of April so assuming the stick to the same time between free weekends that would put the next one around mid-October although I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't closer to end of August for their one year anniversary. That said, while it is against the ToS/ToU/ToE*, if you have a friend or someone else that trusts you who plays Guild Wars 2 you could always just log in as them and try it out on their account.

*I like things to come in 3s when possibly and I couldn't think of another "Terms of" thing to use in there so I went with Terms of Endearment.

Thanks for the info. I have no friends that play it so I'll have to wait and see if they offer another free weekend soon. Love the OCD in your post BTW

Got 2MULT down to 25% and I think the next time we get him we will be able to defeat him. We also got rather lucky and got Trilla Midwell twice which was nice since she a) has a very small path and b) has an interesting yet not overwhelming fight (freaking rats, still have nightmares of them that will now be replaced by bipedal armadillos). All in all, rather fun night and I am looking forward to next Saturday's bounties.

Had this game on my radar for quite a while, but between having a work laptop (with a bad vid card, integrated works so I can't complain) and ipads for family use, I haven't been able to justify buying a computer capable of gaming.

But, wife wanted a new computer and wanted an iMac, and I managed to convince her she needed the second one up with a better vid card (650m). Not great but hey!

So, with that I know non-WoW options are limited a bit on osx. While there seems to be a mac client it appears it's forever going to be beta and may not be supported. That said, does anyone use it? How is it if so?

(Also wondering if LOTR online mac client is ok but that's not really for this thread )

Most complaints I see about the Mac client are it typically gives terrible FPS in busy areas, such as Lion's Arch and WvW. But for general gameplay most people say it is bug-free and works fine.

I'm in love with the API release and the sites that are starting to pop up. Sure they are bare-bone right now, but I've heard talk of integration with the trading post, chat between on and offline players, and being able to view your characters and storage from anywhere as just the beginning.

Rumors about new items coming out on the gemstore are unlimited use sickles and axes, new armor skin (Dragon armor, so probably Canthan-themed), swim suits (now we too can be fan-service like Lady Kasmeer), and the ability to increase the default stack size from 250 to 500 on all materials. Next month is also supposedly going to have a new festival based on the old Canthan Dragon Festival from GW1. Hopefully they will find an activity for it that is as fun as rollerbeetle racing was.

Had this game on my radar for quite a while, but between having a work laptop (with a bad vid card, integrated works so I can't complain) and ipads for family use, I haven't been able to justify buying a computer capable of gaming.

But, wife wanted a new computer and wanted an iMac, and I managed to convince her she needed the second one up with a better vid card (650m). Not great but hey!

So, with that I know non-WoW options are limited a bit on osx. While there seems to be a mac client it appears it's forever going to be beta and may not be supported. That said, does anyone use it? How is it if so?

(Also wondering if LOTR online mac client is ok but that's not really for this thread )

Played on the Mac client for a good bit (before getting sucked back into WoW). Works great. Stable. Game only crawls during serious outdoor world boss fights (although I went for the higher GPU option on an i5). Other than that it works really well. Oh, and while i wasn't playing at max settings, I certainly wasn't playing at min either.

LA was not an issue for me at all I might add. Just the risen temple fights and the dragons.

It's a great game and it plays quite nicely on an iMac (unless you're really intolenent of good instead of great performance).

I'm in love with the API release and the sites that are starting to pop up. Sure they are bare-bone right now, but I've heard talk of integration with the trading post, chat between on and offline players, and being able to view your characters and storage from anywhere as just the beginning.

I'm torn. I like the potential it shows, but the new API-based timer sites like v2.gw2stuff.com have really flooded my hipster chest events with pubbies.

For the last month or so, my guild has been running the completely ignored event chains that give a rare bonus chest (just like the dragons or FE or what have you) after reset every day. Things like the Fire Shaman in Iron Marches, Ogre Wars in Fields of Ruin, the Dredge Commissar in Dredgehaunt Cliffs, or Taidha Covington in Bloodtide Coast. It was really fun, like a rewarding guild event that didn't take that long, and a nice change in pace from bouncing between the common chest events (dragons/FE/SB/Golem/Wurm). In all that time, I saw maybe two pubbies that managed to find their way into these events. Not surprising, as they're all kind of out-of-the-way in mid-level zones.

Now, with the API timer sites up, most of those events are getting overrun, especially ones with longer event chains leading up to the end, where my guild runs the entire event chain, and then all of a sudden a 50+ zerg of pubs pops in for the last boss so they can get their yellows. It's gone from making those events fun and decently challenging (Fire Shaman with 10-ish people is a really good boss fight), to scaling ridiculous levels of HP and so many targets for the mobs that you can pretty much just AFK and autoattack 1 to win, making them just as boring and sloggy as the Shatterer.

There's a couple that are still almost completely unknown to most timer-focused pubs (and not on the timer sites), and we have a lot more fun running those than any of our older hipster chests, or any of the other bonus chest content. It'll be a shame when those get added. I'll probably just go back to farming CoF and CoE runs.

Downloaded the client before going to bed last night. Purchasing when I get home. 3 day weekend. Woot. Are you guys still playing on Stormbluff Isle? Looking forward to it.

Fill out the spreadsheet in the OP once you get a username or whisper me in-game for an invite (ars name -> gw name correlation in the spreadsheet) I think most people (including myself) are still on stormbluff. With guesting it matters less but our guild events are on SBI and it's where all of our influence is.

We came within an eyelash of 2(start, added 3rd along the way that dropped after just a minute or two) manning the Fire Shaman a few weeks ago. I had never seen more than a few players there before and have only completed it a couple of times. Iron Marches is a great zone. I am glad more players are getting to these events but I haven't seen the out-of-way events being zerged. I thought everyone was just bouncing the 2 Instigators in Southsun?

Downloaded the client before going to bed last night. Purchasing when I get home. 3 day weekend. Woot. Are you guys still playing on Stormbluff Isle? Looking forward to it.

Fill out the spreadsheet in the OP once you get a username or whisper me in-game for an invite (ars name -> gw name correlation in the spreadsheet) I think most people (including myself) are still on stormbluff. With guesting it matters less but our guild events are on SBI and it's where all of our influence is.

I'll do that. I haven't purchased yet, so if anyone gets perks for inviting someone, send it to thegamer@cox.net (I'm not sure if GW2 does this or not, but if they do...)

We came within an eyelash of 2(start, added 3rd along the way that dropped after just a minute or two) manning the Fire Shaman a few weeks ago. I had never seen more than a few players there before and have only completed it a couple of times. Iron Marches is a great zone. I am glad more players are getting to these events but I haven't seen the out-of-way events being zerged. I thought everyone was just bouncing the 2 Instigators in Southsun?

No idea what things are like on SBI or whatever server you're playing on, but on Maguuma, pretty much any decent event that's listed on the API site is completely zerged during NA evening hours. Maybe we've just got a more active server for PvE?

So, the new patch hit yesterday, along with the new living story instance/dungeon.

It's shit.

It's literally a fifty yard corridor to a boss room, zero mobs or other mechanics, with a simple gimmick to beat him. Nothing at all to the level of the Molten Facility, which is still to this point the best dungeon Anet's produced. The explorable mode boss is a little better, with some more interesting mechanics, but still largely the same with a boatload more HP.

Anet, I am disappoint.

(That said, you do get some good loot out of it for basically no work at all, so yay?)

Seems they should have labeled it a story instance rather than a story dungeon (though the explorable do use the dungeon entry interface). Also, the final is not with this "dungeon" but with the introduction of a new world boss next week.

So, the new patch hit yesterday, along with the new living story instance/dungeon.

It's shit.

It's literally a fifty yard corridor to a boss room, zero mobs or other mechanics, with a simple gimmick to beat him. Nothing at all to the level of the Molten Facility, which is still to this point the best dungeon Anet's produced. The explorable mode boss is a little better, with some more interesting mechanics, but still largely the same with a boatload more HP.

Anet, I am disappoint.

(That said, you do get some good loot out of it for basically no work at all, so yay?)

I haven't had an opportunity to play this one yet, but it sounds like the Halloween dungeon. It was short and mostly pointless too. It's probably a lot cheaper to do that with a "real" dungeon only every 6 months or so.

Ok, possible slight timing issue for tomorrow night. A birthday dinner came up but I shouldn't be more than 15-20 minutes late (so definitely by 9PM CDT).Scratch that. There is a baseball game in town which means traffic will be crap and they know I hate downtown so that is their fault. Gonna take a nap after work and be on at least 30 minutes early.

I was a bit late getting on and we had just three of us on at first but were able to get 2 training missions done (the first one one of us just barely got a hit in before another guild finished it off, the second we got it down with plenty of time to spare with the helping hand of a random stranger nearby). Meta got on right before we started a regular bounty to try and at least get personal rewards and maybe also complete it for guild rewards but ran into a logistics issue and then ran out of time and couldn't get the first target down.

Meta later pointed out to me that in the achievement window you can mouse over the name of the Daily <area> <something> achievements and it will say what all zones are part of that area. I normally just look at those things in the tracker so never realized that since those tooltips are rather sparse other than telling you the quantity. He also tried to convince us that vegamite is edible if spread rather thinly on things instead of just globbed on but we were not quite convinced, or maybe it was just me.

Last Thursday I participated in a guild rush event where we were transformed into spiders and had to traverse an obstacle course. It was fun and more difficult than I expected.

I finally ran Sorrow's Embrace enough times to get a full set of the armor (knight - power/precision/toughness). Coupled with beserker's (power/prevision/critical damage) accessories and weapons and my necro is very durable while still putting out a decent amount of damage. Tough enough to take the hard hits of level 40+ FotM mobs but still having 50% crit chance with 50% critical damage increase. It's my third all exotic armor set and now I'll work on a full beserker's armor set (CoF). Unless they completely overhaul the way condition damage works, I am not interested in getting any condition damage boosting armor/weapons, or healing for that manner.

I need to finish grinding out 100 more armored scales so I can build a better ascended backpiece. I really don't want to infuse the one I have now because it has magic find as a stat.

Also, the Imbued Shaman at FotM level 48 is no joke. I'd rather run dredge + cliffside + blizzard than it.

A few new skins added and looks like a number of events to participate in. The moa racing is you betting on which will be the fastest, but I haven't seen if you can also interact with them to give your bird an edge. The dodgeball event looks like it could be fun as well.

Final update to the Southsun Living Story is live as well. Hold the 4 camps and defeat the karka queen and receive a bonus chest of 2 rares along with the normal boss chest. Nothing fantastic from the sounds of it but something else to do.

Played through the queen encounter and it felt like a rehash of the initial Southsun event. Ended up auto-attacking as none of my other skills would kick off and then I was killed from behind by a wave of spawns that I couldn't see until 20 or so seconds later. Laid dead along with probably a quarter of the other players until the queen died and was rewarded with a bonus chest with 2 rares and a normal chest of the usual greens and blues. The build up of attacks on the settlements was much the same - a huge wave of spawns coming from multiple directions and most everyone dead. Easier to let the settlements fall and then retake. Anet can do festivals and small content great, but their large events are a joke.

Played through the queen encounter and it felt like a rehash of the initial Southsun event. Ended up auto-attacking as none of my other skills would kick off and then I was killed from behind by a wave of spawns that I couldn't see until 20 or so seconds later. Laid dead along with probably a quarter of the other players until the queen died and was rewarded with a bonus chest with 2 rares and a normal chest of the usual greens and blues. The build up of attacks on the settlements was much the same - a huge wave of spawns coming from multiple directions and most everyone dead. Easier to let the settlements fall and then retake. Anet can do festivals and small content great, but their large events are a joke.

I, thankfully, didn't run into any serious performance issues killing me (I did get smashed by a karkaroll through my own stupidity though) but do agree with the general sentiment of this event and the dungeon being a bit meh. While those two things might be a bit lackluster I do appreciate them doing a bit to make Southsun more entertaining to visit by tweaking the zone and events.

I am looking forward to the Dragon Festival/Bash/Party but I am unsure if the wings from it will mesh well with any of my characters. Might have to alter the look of my Warrior or Guardian to fit them in.

The meta events basically prove that in PVE the game is painfully tilted towards DPS, and ANet has no clue about to deal with it except by piling on even more dodge-or-die mobs.

Steampipe is in essence a death trap, and piling on defensive gear makes no difference as the mobs damage output will overwhelm it anyways.

A necromancer is supposed to be a tough bugger, but i have personally experienced young karka during the event that will chew through a full Life Force bar in one or two blows.

I actually find the opposite true for gear- doing an extra bit of DPS with berserker gear makes no real noticeable difference in large fights, whereas the extra few hits you can take with knights gear can help you stay alive through stuff you can't avoid. If you solo a lot, I can see how berserker gear could increase your efficiency by killing guys slightly faster, but I have a much easier time AoEing down groups of orrians in knights gear, and I often survive attacks in big events that take me down to <10% health that I know would have killed me if I wore DPS-oriented gear instead.

There are a number of guys in Southsun that I don't find it fun to fight against, however- reef drakes in particular, though the karka can be irritating as well, especially for melee characters. There's too much damage that's not accompanied by any obvious tell, and it comes in giant spikes so you don't have a chance to react to your health dropping.

The meta events basically prove that in PVE the game is painfully tilted towards DPS, and ANet has no clue about to deal with it except by piling on even more dodge-or-die mobs.

This has always been true (especially for dungeons), and is the main reason that warriors are absolutely top tier for PvE, with mesmers and guardians close behind. Every other class plays second fiddle, except in very rare niche situations.

Never mind that toughness actually makes things worse when dealing with large groups, as higher values actually make mobs more likely to aggro on you.

They have a tail swipe that give a single unit of confuse, a AOE pull (with a massive "shimmer" windup), a confuse field, and lastly a frontal cone pull (usually used as a followup to the confuse field).

The confuse field is the nasty one, as it seems to come with no windup (instead the beast drops it as it jumps away from you), followed by a rapid pull that will leave you just inside the edge of the mentioned field. Get hit by that and suddenly you are looking at 5+ units of confuse ticking.

Btw i just checked the meta-event status on my server, and all the settlements were contested. And they appeared bugged. The nest at Steampipe could not be damaged, and Kiel's outpost refused to be uncontested even with no mobs around. Nice going ANet...